Cajun

08/09/2011

Sometimes my poor hearing is beneficial. I was listening to a speech by the Dalia Lama on my ear buds today, and he said “We are all made by God. We all come from the same source”. I was trying to multitask, however and mis-heard it as “same sauce”.
So, I decided to ponder that a bit. If we do come from the same source, then that would also be the same sauce, would it not? How is it, then that we are all so unique? If we all have the same exact ingredients, i.e., the “same sauce”, then we should be clones of each other, correct? All men would look and act like Adam, all women would look and act like Eve, done deal.
But no. That is not the case.
Down in New Orleans (N’Awlins), the Cajuns have their own style of cooking, which almost always starts with a roux. (per Wikipedia, “Roux” is the thickening agent of three of the mother sauces of classical French cooking”) So yeah, we may all come from the same “roux”, and start out with the same sauce, but there are gazillions of factors, both genetic and environmental that get thrown into the sauce and make us unique, not “same sauce” but individuals. If you’ve ever had Cajun Gumbo, you know that it’s never the same twice, no matter how much you try to follow the recipe. So even though we may all have the same ingredients, we can celebrate the fact that our individual footprint on the universe is ours alone.
My sauce would have quite a bit of salt, honey, brown sugar….. but with a little kick. Kind of like Sweet and Sour sauce, but not pink. More earth tones. Yeah.
So, what about you? What’s in your sauce?